State High Court Allows Conviction of Just One on Conspiracy Charge

Published 4:00 am, Friday, January 19, 2001

Overturning a 40-year-old rule, the California Supreme Court decided yesterday that a defendant can be convicted of conspiracy even if the only co- defendant is acquitted.

The unanimous court rejected the appeal of Donald Price, who was convicted of conspiracy to attempt murder while his 15-year-old co-defendant was acquitted of the charge. Despite a rule in favor of consistent verdicts, the court said a jury has the right to show leniency toward one defendant and not the other.

The court cleared up what had been a muddy area of the law concerning when juries can return inconsistent verdicts.

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Price was arrested with Floyd Palmer after a wild crime binge in Riverside County in 1996.

Palmer, who was 15 at the time, was riding in a stolen pickup truck driven by Price, then 29. The two had already shot at one driver when they sideswiped a BMW driven by Judith Showalter. Palmer got out and shot Showalter in the head. While she slumped over and played dead, the duo took her pager and purse,

pulled her out of her car and drove off in it.

Showalter survived, and the men were arrested and tried separately on several charges, including premeditated attempted murder of the first driver and conspiracy in the attempted murder of Showalter.

Price, who has a criminal record, was found guilty of all charges, including conspiracy in the Showalter shooting. A jury acquitted Palmer of the conspiracy charge.

In his appeal, Price relied on a 40-year-old law in California -- known as the consistency rule -- that said that if there are only two alleged conspirators to a crime and one is acquitted, then the other is also entitled to an acquittal.

But a state appeals court ruled that the rule doesn't apply when the two defendants are tried before separate juries.

In affirming that decision, the state Supreme Court said it was time to get rid of the consistency rule, calling it a "vestige of the past with no continuing validity."

"Many reasons may explain apparently inconsistent verdicts," wrote Justice Ming Chin in the court's opinion, including "lenience, compromise, different evidence as to different defendants, or, possibly, that two juries simply viewed similar evidence differently."

He noted that there was substantial evidence supporting Price's conspiracy conviction. "A jury clearly has the unreviewable power, if not the right, to acquit whatever the evidence," he concluded.

The decision "simplifies the law a great deal," said Gary Brozin, the deputy attorney general who represented the state. He said judges have made exceptions to the consistency rule over the years, but only on a case-by-case basis.